This week has been full of feeling things. Mostly in response to the the SEC Report and its fallout. Here is what I learned this week. Some of these things I sort of knew but some of these I didn't. And even the ones I did they came with a Force.
1.) The LDS Church can do whatever it wants and most believers could hardly care. They simply have little space in their head to face the facts that their entire life is built on a lie. This week showed me that LDS Leaders know this and prey on it. The First Presidency for over 20 years chose to carry out a plan to make more money at the expense of whatever fallout would happen one day if they got caught. They took the risk because they too didn't believe anything significant would happen that would offset the benefit of making Billions of Dollars.
2.) Follow the money. The Ethics of What Church leaders carried out only makes sense to me if they clearly don't believe the Church themselves. They literally didn't care about honesty, ethics, the appearance of Evil, their very own teachings about worthiness, having the Holy Ghost, and being an example of Christ. See the Wirthlin Quote Below. And on top of that, the financial benefit to them and their posterity is likely significantly more than most of us guess. The Leadership is setting itself up to have few to no butts in the seats in the future but to have so much cash and property they literally seem to see people simply as a way to transmit the virus of "wealth and property accumulation".
3.) I can only make sense of this if the top 15 are not good humans. And they know themselves that the Church isn't what it claims to be. That all of this is an intentional fraud. It is so clear right now that they don't believe the very doctrines they teach. See the Wirthlin Quote again. If deception and fraudulent behavior equals not having the companionship of the Holy Ghost, how can the leadership be a prophets, Seers, and Revelators when That same Leadership for 20 years carried out a massive deception of fraudulent behavior?
4.) This also means that Apologists and Progressive Mormons who make excuses for this or who give rhetoric to it not being that bad also don't really believe. Its a fun game for many of them where they enjoy the mental benefit of being able to come up with answers regardless of the problems. They like being the team captain. They enjoy being the smart compassionate nuanced Mormon. They can't possibly believe in the Holy Ghost, or Prophets, or the Companionship of the Holy Ghost because they know their leaders are corrupt and have been consistently so for at least 2 decades. Being Mormon is far more important than being fully honest at the risk of NOT being Mormon. I make room that some of them are trying to change things from the inside and they want to reduce harm and suffering inside the system. AND That they likely see themselves as doing a good work. But they do so with the tradeoff of losing integrity as Their words can't be trusted to represent their thoughts as their inability to call a spade a spade this week shows that none of this is about whether Mormonism is actually true or can deliver salvation as the Lord's True Church.
5.) The Church Leadership if they believed in their own doctrine would make themselves available to Church discipline. See Handbook images below. This should be the final straw, and certainly was for me, that these top 15 are above the system AND THEY KNOW IT. They have re-written the processes so that they are outside the realm of accountability. They have insulated themselves away from any process that would allow the members of the Church to hold them accountable. And because they get rid of critics they ensure the Majority will always be blind adherents. And hence the only option a member has is to leave. Your Leadership is corrupt and more corrupt than you likely know. Its hard to understand from the inside but almost everyone who was once in and dedicated to Mormonism and has since left and been given enough time to process and grieve says they are more at peace and grateful they left. That is certainly true for me and my family and for most of the 100's of people around me.
6.) Lastly, I will fail a thousand more times, but I am going to focus my mental and emotional capacity on helping those on the inside who can be helped to wake up and see the deception. To inform them to make new choices. And to support them and those who have stepped away to create a more vibrant second half of life. And Starting today I am going to work really hard to AVOID trying to force this egregiously corrupt deception called Mormonism to be honest and accountable and good. It was from its inception, never going to be that. And if it ever gets there it will be centuries and centuries before it does.To all of you who are angry, sad, frustrated, and disappointed. Who can't believe the Leaders can be this detached from the expectation their members have of them. To see how compromised their integrity is and seeing that on the inside it really doesn't matter what these men do. I see you. I am feeling all of that today.
